Good news! I’m going to lend you
my pickup truck for as long as you’d like to use it!

There are a few catches, though.

First, you’ll have to pay me
whether you drive it or not. Refuse and you’ll be thrown in jail. You can buy a
car of your own, if you like — hey, it’s still a free country! — but don’t
expect me to stop billing you for my truck if you do.

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Second, expect to pay me about 50
percent above the going rental rate. It may sound like highway robbery to you,
but trust me, I know I’m worth it.

Finally, I refuse to rent you any
other type of vehicle for the money you’re paying me, even if my truck doesn’t
suit your family’s needs. Oh, and did I mention that I’m lobbying legislators to
force an increase in your rental payments every year?

Welcome to Michigan public
schooling.

Roughly
12,500 teachers and parents rallied in Lansing last month in support of
automatic increases in public school spending. The legislative proposals in
question,
Senate Bill 246 and
House Bill 4582, would require the Michigan Legislature to annually increase
its public school appropriation by a minimum of either 5 percent or the rate of
inflation, whichever is less (bigger increases would be OK, too). The bills do
not take the state’s
overall
primary, secondary and postsecondary student population into
account, so taxpayers would have to spend more money even if the system were
educating fewer pupils.

Let’s take a moment to reflect on
this demand and the context in which it is being made.

Contrary to the popular
misconception promoted by school employee unions, public schools in Michigan are
not underfunded. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, the
state’s average per-pupil expenditure during the 2002-2003 school year was more
than $10,000.[1]
That’s about one-quarter of a million dollars per classroom. It’s also thousands
of dollars more than most private schools charge in tuition — more than double
in some cases.

For instance, total per-pupil
spending in the Ann Arbor Public Schools was over $12,500 in the 2003-2004
school year.[2]
The city also has
numerous religious schools charging tuitions that usually fall between
$3,000 and $7,000 (and this includes the higher tuitions charged to
out-of-parish students). The city’s nonsectarian private schools mostly charge
tuitions in the $6,000 to $10,000 range.

It is true, of course, that the
most elite prep schools charge higher fees.
Greenhills School is perhaps Ann Arbor’s priciest option, with a 2004-2005
tuition of $14,760. In other words, the average per-pupil expenditure of
the city’s public schools is only about $2,000 below the tuition of one of the
most expensive private schools in town. While Greenhills does receive donations
from alumni to supplement its tuition income, much of that money goes to
financial assistance for families with limited means. More than one out of every
six students at the school receives financial aid to help defray the cost of
tuition, and the average award is nearly $9,000.

Part of the difference in cost
between Greenhills and the public school district is accounted for by
differences in facilities. Among other things, Greenhills School sits on a
30-acre wooded campus with a stream and a nature preserve — not something that
the average Ann Arbor public school is offering. Greenhills also has a 9-to-1
student-teacher ratio and an average class size of 15. It’s difficult to compare
educational quality given that Greenhills students probably come from more
advantaged families, but virtually all of the school’s students go on to
college.

Of course, the liberal arts focus
of Greenhills might not be the best thing for your children or grandchildren.
Perhaps you’d prefer a more pervasively religious educational environment. If
Michigan had an education funding program that helped all families get into the
schools of their choosing, parents would be able to pick the school best suited
to their kids, instead of being forced to pay for a rigid, expensive education
monopoly that simply may not deliver the sort of services they want and need.

When it comes to buying or
leasing a car, we have a lot of choices, and competition discourages any one
manufacturer from charging inflated prices. The profit motive ensures that
automakers are always looking for ways to make their vehicles more attractive,
from side-curtain airbags to 150-channel satellite radios.

Why do we expect so much less
from our schools?

#####

Andrew J. Coulson is senior fellow in education policy at the Mackinac Center
for Public Policy, a research and educational institute headquartered in
Midland, Mich. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is hereby granted,
provided that the author and the Center are properly cited.

[1]
The National Center for Education Statistics records that the state’s total
primary and secondary public school expenditures were $17,954,395,000 in
2002-03, while the system enrolled 1,785,908 students in that year.